MS CLAKE IS DOING A PHD WITH LUKE KENNARD AT BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY, ON THE FEMINIST ABSURD IN AMERICAN AND BRITISH POETRY JENNA CLAKE I...

Friday, 30 October 2015

LESBIAN VAMPIRE ACADEMY

TRIGGER WARNING - AN ADULT POEM FOR HALLOWEEN...LESBIAN VAMPIRE ACADEMY It is not, one might suspect, a place for sisters To swallow a garlic tablet, or inspect a crucifix;Lipstick applied strictly without mirrors; The librarian expects Swinburne’s books

Returned to the minute or penalties accrue; Turned at eighteen from mortal to undivine,

They prefer their correction on the rack Wriggling as they divest them of mortal wine –The inside gag they have to label our blood –For make no mistakes, these fanged co-eds

With their skirts and blouses kill for sport Like gods did once; they’re the new thing, Digitally connected to the boys they lure To suspend upside down, pleading anaemia

Or malaria or worse – girls long in tooth, Their claws decreased for Instagram, their busts Instead pronounced – most from Slavonic Lands, or so they sound – they smirk, and grind

Their words like chewing bones, torture Syntax because they can; whip their torsos Into archaic shape, and shine at night As brightly as any chemical tan applied;

I have begged for these daughters of Satan To accept me onto their course; their syllabi Defeats most sibyls, their demonic kissing Transformative as any degree in engineering

Or genetics. I want to learn to die in the arms Of one of these creatures of the evening glow –Though they prefer artifice and gaming Among their own lithe immortal jejune kind;

They toss and throw men around like dice, Break off their parts like icicles in red snow; And genuinely disdain what jets from lust Except it has glucose and drips roseate,

Sublimely, from a spliced open vein or more; Don’t call them tarts or harlots or whores, Just because you cannot control their feedingOr what drives them to desire a frenzied milkThat runs in rivulets down the giving dead. I ask for them to have mercy on my Christian Birth and imbue me with acrobatic skills So I can fly-crawl and web-scuttle as they do;I have been lead here by graphic insights And a craving to live when rivals pass away;

But tonight is Halloween so they are gay And dancing sickly-pale, half-vivid, quietTo hear the ringing of girls from the academy Trick or treating in the laneway; I am dropped

Like a bad option and told to return next year. I pass giggling donors dressed as ghosts,Envision soaked engaging toasts ahead; Praying to the grape-ripe moon for dark power. 30 October 2015 copyright Todd Swift